Chinelle Henry prepared to step up in Healy’s absence as she is looking to take this opportunity with both hands.
Chinelle Henry is ready to step in for UP Warriorz and make an unexpected WPL debut she hopes will be the start of something huge.
Despite not having played yet, Henry, a strong middle-order batsman for the West Indies and a useful fast bowler, was called up late to the tournament to replace Australia captain Healy, who is recuperating from a stress injury in her foot.
“This is a really huge, huge opportunity for me,” Henry told ESPNcricinfo’s Powerplay podcast. “My only other franchise league would’ve been the CPL, so to be a part of one of the biggest franchises around in female cricket in the WPL is a really big thing for my career going forward. Next year maybe I could secure a place to be actually a part of a team permanently coming in the next edition of the WPL, so this year is definitely kind of like a test run, a trial run, for me.
“Coming in has a replacement, that’s a huge set of responsibilities on me, huge shoes to fill. The atmosphere playing along with some of the best in the world from their respective regions is going to be huge. This will be a lot of learning this year and I’m hoping that I can actually go there and deliver on the field when called upon, because that’s the reason why I’m here. Obviously they saw something. Healy, unfortunately the team lost to injury, and to be that replacement is a huge honour.”
One need only look back to December to understand why UP Warriorz grabbed Henry’s number when Healy passed away from the injury she had been fighting intermittently since the T20 World Cup the previous year.
On Henry’s first trip of India, he showed some real excellent form with a 16-ball 43 plus one wicket in a losing cause during West Indies’ third Twenty20 International against India at Navi Mumbai and 61 off 72 balls in the third ODI, which India won at Vadodara.
She now hopes to follow in the footsteps of her teammates Deandra Dottin and Hayley Matthews by entering the WPL for the first time and then joining up with Stafanie Taylor to compete in additional international franchise events.
As the West Indies team looks to build on their success of making it to the T20 World Cup semi-finals last year, where they lost to eventual champions New Zealand, any lessons Henry can impart to the younger players will be beneficial. Henry is 29 years old and has 111 international caps across both white-ball formats.
When West Indies plays five other teams in April for just two qualifying spots at the 50-over World Cup, which will be held in India later this year, they will need all of those elements to work together once more.
“When you talk about West Indies, we always want to be at the big stage, big competitions, we always want to be competing,” Chinelle Henry said. “The same amount of confidence, the same amount of enthusiasm that we play the T20s with, that’s something we are trying to go out there and play the longer version with. The longer version of the game is something that we are going to have to take more responsibility for as a person, as a team, and know that to avoid these situations [going through the qualifier] this is what we have to do.
“We won the T20 World Cup once and definitely the ODI World Cup is something that we talked about. We just don’t want to keep dwelling on the past that, ‘hey, we won the 2016 T20 World Cup’. Teams are evolving, teams are getting better, players are getting better. We know that we have to get better and these are things that we have to do in order to be better at the longer version of the game.”